TH_VER$

Syntax

TH_VER$ (thingname$)

Location

Fn

Things in QDOS terms refer to an extension of QDOS which was introduced by the Thing System provided by Qjump’s Extended Pointer Interface and was also implemented (although slightly differently) on the THOR XVI computer. It is an universal storage method for named resources.

A Thing List is created by the Thing System which lists all of these named resources, which can range from a piece of machine code to a printer driver (and much more). The idea is that any program which wants to access a specified utility or driver need only search in this list to see if the Thing is installed in the current system, and then pointers contained in this list allows the program to access the Thing (if available).

Each Thing can be usable by several users at the same time or can be restricted so that it can only be accessed if nothing else is using it. Things are identified by their name and have a version number which is returned by the function TH_VER$. The version number of a Thing can be something like 1.03, or it can actually be representative of the functions provided in this version (eg. 1001100) - although it is not certain if this second type of ‘version number’ will be correctly returned by the current version of TH_VER$, since at the time of writing we have not come across anything which uses this.

If a Thing was not found in memory or another error occurred, TH_VER$ will return the standard error code (see ERNUM).

Example

The Hotkey System (HOT_REXT), a part of the Extended Pointer Environment (regarded as standard today), is installed as a Thing. Get its version with:

PRINT TH_VER$ ("HOTKEY")

NOTE 1

In versions prior to version 1.02, this function could return the wrong value for some Things.

NOTE 2

The current version of this command will not work on a THOR XVI computer.

CROSS-REFERENCE

THING, TH_FIX.